the moaning-keening-growling-suffering sounds vibrating in my throat. I feel it when more tears fall onto my hands, sliding onto her hand, sealing us together.
I feel it when her skin warms and her fingers brush—ever so slightly—against mine.
I suck in a breath, and look down to find her … glowing. Not some trick of the setting sun reflecting off her skin, but light beaming from within her, painting her bare arms a soft orange, lighting the hollows of her eyes, illuminating her lips until they are redder than the roses dying in the city behind us.
“Isra?” I whisper, with equal parts fear and hope. “Isra?”
With a soft moan, her chest lifts, her throat lengthens, and the fingers still twined through mine squeeze tightly. I clutch her hand with both of mine, wishing so hard that I’m afraid to breathe as her head tilts back and her lips part. She sighs, and gold and orange sparks fly from her mouth.
Instinct tells me to move back, but I stay, refusing to be frightened away as more and more sparks fly with each breath until Isra is breathing fire, but showing no signs of burning. Instead of feeding on her flesh, the fire is nourishing her, transforming her.
Ribbons of flame whip out to tease at her chest, her arms, all the way down to her knees and bare toes. Her legs grow longer, her hips and shoulders wider. The bones of the hand still clutched in mine shift and reshape, while above her eyebrows and down her cheeks orange and gold scales unfold like cloth laid across her skin.
The light shining from within her glows brighter, the flames between her lips rise higher, and higher, until I can’t resist the urge to reach out and touch them. I brace myself for pain, but my hand passes into the center of the fire without a single burn. The flames are hot, but they don’t hurt.
They … heal.
Warmth and sweetness stitch up things inside me, soothing and reassuring, kneading and molding, taking and giving. My teeth grow smaller and slicker against my tongue, my tongue creeps farther back into my throat, and, for a moment, it feels as if my jaw will melt off my face before it firms up again in a different, more delicate shape than it had before. My shoulders and arms grow looser and lighter. My fingers splay wide, the muscles of my hands rippling uncomfortably before relaxing into their new shape, a rounder shape, without any dangers hidden beneath the skin.
I stare at my new hands, surprised, but not missing my claws. They are a part of the past. This is the future. My future.
She’s going to live. I know it even before the fire fades away, leaving us alone in the cool, bluing light of early evening. Even before Isra opens her eyes and looks up at me and smiles a smile more beautiful than the one she had before. She’s even more breathtaking now. Not Smooth Skin, not Monstrous, but something in between, a strong, stunning, living, breathing beauty with scales all the colors of fire, and eyes as green as they ever were.
“I love you,” I say, needing it to be the first thing she hears.
“I love you, too.” Her smile grows impossibly wider as she reaches for me.
“I don’t know what I would have done without you.” Tears rise in my eyes again as I pull her into my arms and hold her tightly. But they’re different tears. Grateful tears I don’t try to hide as I hug her even closer, burying my face in the soft curve of her neck, smelling her Isra smell, reveling in the way her wild hair tickles my cheek.
“Are you …” She pulls away, her new hands cupping my face. Their shape is different, but the way her touch makes me feel is exactly the same—alive and hopeful and happier than I could ever be without her.
“You’re … different. And tears …” Her lips part as she brushes a tear from my cheek with her thumb. “How?”
“The magic of the planet. The desert is alive again, and I’ve changed.
She only recently became accustomed to seeing her old self. How will she adjust to this body? Will she be able to see the beauty that I see? Or will she be troubled by her scales and new size and feet no longer white and thin but wide and light brown with orange and yellow scales freckling their tops?
“I can feel it.” Isra lifts a hand to her face. Her fingers feather over her forehead and down her cheeks to her throat, farther down, past the strap of her overalls to feel her bare shoulder, gingerly exploring the scales that will shield her skin from the harsh light of the sun, hold in heat during the cold nights, and protect her from other natural dangers of this world.
“I’m like you.”
“No. You’re like you, with a little of me.” I watch her discover her new legs and feet, grateful she doesn’t seem disturbed by what she sees.
“And I’m me, with a little of you,” I say, holding out my hand, letting her see that the chambers that once sheathed my claws have vanished. “We’re something … new.”
She points her feet and flexes them, giving her toes an experimental wiggle. “My shoes would never fit now.”
“You hate shoes anyway,” I say, heart breaking when she looks up at me and laughs her throaty laugh. It’s terrifying to think how close I was to living without that laugh, that smile, all of my sweet, brave, maddening, perfect Isra. I swallow, fighting another wave of emotion as she wraps her arms around my neck.
“I do hate shoes,” she whispers, leaning into me until her forehead touches mine and her heat warms my lips. “Why are you so sad, love?”
“You almost died,” I say, voice breaking. “Maybe you did die. I don’t know. I was so scared. I was …”
“It’s okay.” She presses soft kisses to my cheekbones, the tip of my nose, the skin between my eyes. “That’s part of what makes it real.”
“Makes what real?” I ask, breath coming faster as she kisses the corner of my mouth, making it twitch.
“Love, of course. You’re not stupid, Gem. Don’t pretend to be,” she says, mimicking her queen voice from our time working in the garden so perfectly that I can’t help but smile.
“Yes, I am stupid,” I say, holding her more tightly. “I should have come sooner.”
“You came when you could, and everything is as it should be. The planet is whole again.” She moves closer, angling her head to fit her lips to mine. “That’s all that matters.”
“No, it’s not.” My hands mold to her ribs, holding her away from me.
I need to tell her the truth. I need her to know everything before I can be sure the worst is behind us. “I could have come months ago, but I … Terrible things happened, and …” I moisten my dry lips, and force myself to speak the miserable truth. “My son is dead. And my father. And many of my people. I was too late. At first I hated myself for it, then I hated you, and then I hated the planet and the ancestors and … everything and everyone.
“I started walking into the desert,” I continue, getting the words out as quickly as I can. “I walked until I stopped feeling anything, and then finally … something. I still loved you. Love was there, hidden beneath the suffering. I started back to Yuan, and finally started to hope again, because I was doing what I should have done before. I was coming back to you.”
She smiles a smaller, sadder smile that fades quickly. “I’m sorry about your family,” she says, eyes shining. “So sorry. You were right to hate me.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were,” she says, bowing her head. “I could have done so many things differently, better. And if I had, maybe—”
“So could I. So could most of the people on this planet and all of our ancestors. You did the best you could.”
“Isn’t that what I just said to you?” She lifts her chin, sticking her nose into the air in that way that drives me mad and makes me love her even more because it is so
“I will listen. I will always listen.”
“Me too.” Her forehead wrinkles. “I have so many things to tell you, things I should have told you the night you left, and things that have happened since then that—”
“Do I need to know those things right now?”
She arches a brow as my hands travel up her back, pulling her chest tight to mine. “No.… They can wait,” she says, relaxing into me, fingers teasing at my braid as she looks up. “Assuming you’re going to kiss me.”
